White House: No surprises in Geithner proposal

11/30/12 11:12 AM EST

The White House said Friday that there were no surprises in their closed-door proposal to House and Senate Republicans to resolve the fiscal cliff.

"I was surprised that they were surprised," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling on Air Force One.

Sources in the meeting told POLITICO that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking on behalf of the administration, proposed a two-step process to raise $1.6 trillion dollars in revenue. The first step would raise $960 billion through higher taxes on upper earners, while another $600 billion would come from tax reform. Geithner also asked Congress to cede its power to raise the debt ceiling.

Hill Republicans immediately rejected the offer, with House Speaker John Boehner saying “no substantive progress has been made” on resolving the impasse. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he "burst into laughter" at the proposal.

Earnest declined to confirm specifically what Geithner proposed to the Hill, but said: "There's nothing that was included in those discussion that is going to come as a surprise to you"

Earnest said that the administration's proposals were exactly what Obama has talked about on the campaign trail for over a year.

"There's no reason for anyone to be surprised," Earnest said. "This is the approach that the president has talked about for a long time."

Earnest also added that the election results showed that the Republicans who were suprised by the proposal "are a long way from where the American people are."

"In order to get a compromise done, we're going to have to have people on the other side of the aisle to set aside their partisan interests," Earnest said.

A House GOP aide said that the Bush-era tax cut expiration that Obama made a centerpiece of his campaign only added up to only $800 billion in new revenue — while the Obama administration's proposal includes $1.6 trillion in new revenue.

"Yesterday, three weeks after the election, the president asked for twice that. As in, two times the amount. Double," the aide said.